


car games

by skuls



Category: The X-Files
Genre: scully and william play car games, this is weird and also mulders barely in it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-16
Updated: 2016-07-16
Packaged: 2018-07-24 10:25:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7504711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skuls/pseuds/skuls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He gets bored on long car rides, restless, tapping his sneakered foot against the center console rhythmically. There is a succession of car games, and he gets tired of them fast. “Who wants to count cars, Mom?” he whines, just a little. “That’s boring.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	car games

**Author's Note:**

> written for xfwvc on tumblr. original post: http://how-i-met-your-mulder.tumblr.com/post/147507574898/written-for-leiascullys-xfwritingchallenge

i.

He gets bored on long car rides, restless, tapping his sneakered foot against the center console rhythmically. There is a succession of car games, and he gets tired of them fast. “Who wants to count cars, Mom?” he whines, just a little. “That’s boring.”

Grasping for something new,Scully teaches him the ABC game she remembers playing when she was a kid - Maggie was very organized about it, making the entire car participate, and delegating turns in a circle. It’s the game where you look for letters of the alphabet on road signs. Will likes to compete, so he suggests they make it a competition, see who can get the most letters, and keeps score in his FBI notebook with a pen that the dog chewed. He wins, of course - it’s still early, and Scully is basically running on coffee and concentrating on driving, and Will is smart, can spot letters a lot better with his nose pressed against the window. “Hey, Mom, let’s do words in alphabetical order,” he suggests excitedly, tapping his pen against the blue striped sheet of the notebook. He's almost always moving, hands a blur, bouncing up on the toes of his sneakers, coming up with new tricks to keep the games interesting. She's wondered if this energy will fade with age. If he's anything like his father, it won't.  

He grows bored fast - like any six-year-old kid - and comes up with new developments as much as he can. “What about finding letters one at a time to make up words come up with by the other person?” he says, leaning between the front seats.

“Sit back, William,” Scully says almost automatically, and he slumps back in his spot, staring at her in the rearview mirror expectantly. “That sounds like a good idea,” she adds, smiling. “You go first.”

Will grins mischievously. “X-File,” he says dramatically.

“Cheater,” she teases. “That’s not one word!”

“Hyphen, Mom,” he replies, clearly pleased, thinking he’s stumped her.

Scully stabs a finger at the front window. “Exit 129. First letter,” she says with some satisfaction. Everyone knows X is the hardest letter.

She gets it much faster than he clearly expected, which makes him pout a little as he tallies it down in the notebook. “Okay, my turn, your word, go,” he says.

They pass a sign announcing Point Pleasant, West Virginia. “Mothman,” she says automatically, humming a little. _Jeremiah was a bullfrog…_

They toss names of monsters and cryptids back and forth - Jersey Devil, Sasquatch, Flukeman. Will is delighted with this new evolution, laughs when she gets stuck on _vampire_. “I didn’t know we were gonna be playing _Scooby Doo_ edition,” he says.

 

ii.

She stops at a welcome center just over the Indiana line, tells Will to be back at the car in under ten minutes. He throws both arms around her, and kisses her elbow. “Okay, Mom.” She smiles and tousles his hair.

Scully buys two packs of trivia cards in the welcome center, and finds Will beside the vending machines. He shoots her a Mulder smile and tosses her a packet of M&M's that he must have bought with the coins he keeps in his pocket. She gives him a hug, pours some multi-colored chocolate into his left hand, and swings his right on the way back to the car.

He asks her the trivia questions in the car, and she counters with math problems and spelling words from the workbook he brought home from school. Before, when she and Mulder had mapped out the country with the tire treads of their car, she might've done better (Mulder was always spouting off facts, gesturing with his bag of seeds), but it's been a long time, so Will gets more points. He has colorful smears on the palm of his hand from where he clutched his handful of chocolate, and the sun bounces off of the smudges when he reaches up front for the second trivia packet.

 

iii.

Will makes another tally on her half of the sheet of notebook paper. “Okay, I win that half,” he says, with some satisfaction. “My turn to start: apple.” They’re playing a word game where you have to think of rhyming words - a game that he’s good at because of his constant reading.

Scully takes a sip of her tea, and grabs a fry from the cardboard container in the center, thinking. “Chapel,” she says.

“Dapple.”

“Grapple.”

Will raises his eyebrow in a way that mirrors her own habit. “Mom, that doesn’t count,” he says in what Mulder would call a Scully voice. Is this what she looked like on the other side of the desk? “Grape flavored apples?”

“It’s a word, Will, so it counts,” Scully says back, still teasing, grinning at her son over the sticky fast-food table. God, her usual diet is a little off track, but they’re traveling, so who cares. Kids enjoy limp-with-grease burgers and fries.  

“Would it be in the dictionary? Grape flavored apples, Mom.” He gestures wildly. “I think there should be a rule against made up words by a corporation.” Will sits back and crosses his arms, pleased with himself.

Scully hides a smile; he’s definitely the son of a doctor and a psychologist. “I don’t think so, sweetie. And besides, grapple is a word _outside_ of grape flavored apples. It means to wrestle.”

Will makes a face like he’s upset he didn’t get that one, takes a long, slow sip out of his milkshake. And then he grins suddenly. “ _Snapple_ ,” he says happily.

 

iv.

“Can we play the Dad game, Mom?” he asks softly, curled up on his bed.

Scully comes over to sit beside him, rubbing his back. She knows that Will is a little shaky on this topic, so she created a more preferable way to give him knowledge - she’ll tell him a Mulder story and he’ll have to guess if it’s true or not. If he’s right, he gets a point. If he’s wrong, she gets a point. He used to lose a lot, but now he’s figured out the ultimate weirdness of his parents. “Sure,” she says softly, rhythmically circling his back with her fingertips.

He clambers up into her lap, burying his head against her neck. “Go,” he says.

Scully thinks for a moment. “One time, a woman we’d gone to interview thought your dad was there to fix something that was leaking. The water made the floor give way, and he fell through the floor.”

Will tips his head to consider this. “True,” he says.

She smiles, remembering that case. “Yep.” Will smiles, too. “One time,” she continues, “your dad called me a bunch of times from Massachusetts while his apartment was being fumigated. He claimed that cockroaches were murdering people.”

He laughs, startled, blue eyes wide in the darkened room. “Not true,” he says confidently.

Scully raises her eyebrows cryptically. “True.”

Will is surprised. He sags a little against her, resting his head against her shoulder. “Tell me a not true one. This is too easy,” he complains.

He’s always had questions about his dad - wanting to know where he went, why he left, if he’s coming back. She’s tried to paint Mulder in the best light possible - she wants her son to know his father, the beautiful, complicated, funny, eccentric man that he was. But it’s hard for Will to have a lot of faith in someone he doesn’t remember, someone he’s never even seen pictures of. He’s nervous about this trip. The way he’s sagging limply against her is a sure sign, as well as a sign of exhaustion.

“Your father loves you,” she says. “He hated to leave you. He misses you, and thinks about you every day.”

Will stiffens. “Not true?” he asks nervously, rubbing his knuckle against his mouth, a reflex from childhood.

She shakes her head. “Of course it's true, baby,” she whispers, kissing his downy head. “Of course it's true.”

She doesn't know for sure if it's true, but she knows Mulder. She remembers him cradling William in her bedroom, staring down at him and whispering, _he's so small, Scully, I didn't know a person could be this small_ , remembers reading _I want to come home, to you and to William_. She knows Mulder and his great capacity to love, remembers his face when he agreed to do the IVF, remembers his hand against her stomach, his amazed smile. She's imagined him there every day of their life, playing car games with them, holding Will, reading to him, driving him to school. He knows. But William doesn't.

He falls asleep in her lap, limbs limp and spilling over, and she moved him into bed, tucking the covers around him. “It's going to be okay,” she promises her baby, brushing the dark spill of his hair off of his forehead.

 

v.

“Pretend it's a game,” she whispered to him, and so here he is, rounding the side of the car. He holds her hand.

Mulder stands there, almost awkwardly, hands in his pockets, and Will stops straight in his tracks and kind of stares for a minute. She wonders if she should go to Mulder or stay with Will, or just step away and let this unravel itself. She needs this to work, almost desperately, but doesn't know how to piece it together right.

“William,” Mulder says, like the whole world depends on it. (Her world does.)

“Hi,” Will says quietly.

Mulder scuffles his foot against the grass. “It's been a long time,” he says. “I've… missed you.”

Will looks up at Scully, startled. She smiles encouragingly, and nudges him a little.

“I got you something,” Mulder says. He pulls a small red cardboard box out of his pocket, and holds it out. “I don't know - you like card games?”

It's Uno, one of Will’s favorites. He shoots Scully a look, and she shakes her head to show that she didn't tell him. She's barely talked to Mulder in years.

He smiles, and reaches out to take the Uno box from Mulder’s hand. “Do you know the Scooby Doo themed word game?” he asks. “Mom keeps beating me.”

               

  



End file.
